This pilot study is the first to examine the relationship between free will perceptions and psychiatric symptoms in 32 patients with schizophrenia. Participants were interviewed using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale to assess symptom severity and the Free Will Subscale of the Free Will and Determinism Scale to assess free will perceptions. As hypothesized, a moderately strong association was found between greater free will perceptions and less severe total psychiatric symptoms. When examining symptoms broken down into positive, negative, and affective type, it appears that the relationship was only significant for positive symptoms. While the associations for negative symptoms and affective were in the expected direction, the effect sizes were small and nonsignificant. A content analysis was also conducted to examine qualitatively how patients conceptualize the construct of free will and its role in coping with their own mental illness. Most patients (74.1%) appeared to endorse at least some degree of free will in managing their illness. At first pass, results of this study suggest that holding a free will perspective may mitigate psychiatric symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. However, it is possible that less severe symptoms lead to a greater sense of free will. Future longitudinal research is needed to replicate the link between free will and psychiatric symptoms and to clarify the direction of the associations.

It is an interesting pilot study--even though they used a scale for measuring free will beliefs that we criticize in our paper on The Free Will Inventory (namely, the Free Will and Determinism scale by Rakos et al.). Minimally, this is more fodder for thought for those who are interested in the psychological and practical upshots of believing in free will (whether good or bad).

p.s. On a related note, I have been working with a team for the past few years to develop a Portuguese version of FWI. We have finally validated the scale--which provides some preliminary evidence that the beliefs picked out by the scale may be cross-culturally stable. We should have a write up (in English) of our efforts and findings soon. In the meantime, let me know if you're interested in translating, administering, and validating FWI in another language!

07/20/2016

One of the most salient and noteworthy facts about the question of free will is that people find it confusing. Just try teaching a course on the topic, and you will immediately notice that there is something drawing students toward incompatibilism but that there is also something drawing them toward compatibilism. This is part of what gives the question its enduring appeal and makes it so difficult to resolve.

Research on the cognitive science of people's free will intuitions should give us some insight into this confusion. Such research should not simply say that people are incompatibilists, or that they are compatibilists; it should give us a better sense of what is drawing people in these conflicting directions.

In our early work on this topic, Shaun Nichols and I made an initial attempt to address this puzzle. We provided evidence that people are drawn in different directions depending on whether they are thinking about the issue abstractly or concretely. When people are thinking in the abstract about a deterministic universe, they tend to be more drawn to incompatibilism. However, when people are thinking concretely about specific individual agents within such a universe, they tend to be more drawn to compatibilism.

But of course, this just leaves us with a new question. Why do people's intuitions differ depending on whether they think about the issue in the abstract or in the concrete?

As some of you may know, this deeper question has been the site of some recent tumult. Our original paper proposed an explanation that involved the impact of concreteness on people's affective reactions, but unfortunately for us, this explanation was later refuted in two very impressive papers by Florian Cova and colleagues and by Florian Cova and Adam Feltz.

But that just leaves us back where we started. We still need some kind of explanation for the abstract/concrete effect. I thought it might be helpful to propose a new explanation here.

05/08/2016

Do people know when, or whether, they have made a conscious choice? Here, we explore the possibility that choices can seem to occur before they are actually made. In two studies, participants were asked to quickly choose from a set of options before a randomly selected option was made salient. Even when they believed that they had made their decision prior to this event, participants were significantly more likely than chance to report choosing the salient option when this option was made salient soon after the perceived time of choice. Thus, without participants’ awareness, a seemingly later event influenced choices that were experienced as occurring at an earlier time. These findings suggest that, like certain low-level perceptual experiences, the experience of choice is susceptible to “postdictive” influence and that people may systematically overestimate the role that consciousness plays in their chosen behavior.

02/05/2016

How the times have changed! There is an interesting piece over at New York Magazine entitled, "Neuroscience and Free Will Are Rethinking Their Divorce." It's not clear to me why the recent findings are taken to show that we have free will (rather than merely free won't). It's also not clear to me what these new findings add to the discussion above and beyond the important clarificatory conceptual work already done by Mele and others who have challenged the traditional interpretation of the Libet findings. But I am curious to see what the folks here at Flickers think!

10/05/2015

Hi, everyone. First of all, thanks for sharing this opportunity with me! As Thomas mentioned, I’ve been thinking about the place of agency in mental health recently, and I’m excited to get to work through some of my most recent questions and conundrums with you. From what I can tell, this topic is a bit peripheral (might we say, ‘refreshing’?) for Flickers, so I hope you’ll have as much fun thinking about it as I plan to.

Let me start with some background. In my work, I’m concerned with the discipline of psychiatry as both a scientific and an evaluative enterprise. Because of this dual nature, it is simultaneously our most critical and most dangerous tool for alleviating the harms caused by mental illness. As I’m sure I don’t have to rehearse here, psychiatry has historically been used as a tool of social oppression. That being said, I find myself principally motivated to address the very real and pernicious effects of mental illness. The goal is to heal or to help people flourish psychologically.

So what, then, of agency? One thing which is frequently remarked upon is the perception that healthy people have a kind of control over their lives which sufferers of mental illness lack. We often say of the compulsive person that ‘she just couldn’t help it’, or of the addict that ‘he slipped’. First person accounts of depression can invoke the complaint from the agent herself that she her behavior is ‘idiotic’ or ‘unreasonable’. Here, then, is a speculation:

A theory of mental health might be cached out in terms of agency. Perhaps, what is significant about mental disorders is the way in which they impair agency.

As philosopher of psychiatry George Graham likes to put it, mental disorders “gum up the works” (2010).

As perhaps no one knows better than readers here, our perceptions of what it means for human beings to exercise agency are changing—and this only makes this issue more complicated. Here then, is my basic question. In light of recent empirical evidence from the sciences of the mind, what is it (if anything) that sufferers of mental illness lack, and what does this imply about the aim of therapeutic intervention? This is a huge subject of course, and over the next few weeks I hope to examine only a few pieces of the puzzle. I hope also that you all will offer more! Until next time, here are a few questions to mull over:

09/03/2015

The New York Times has been covering the recent attempt to replicate a number of well-known psychology studies. See here for details (and here for the original report). Perhaps unsurprisingly, a number of findings failed to replicate (which is a general problem in social psychology that has been gathering steam during the past few years). One study that failed to be replicated that is especially relevant to the readers of this blog is the Vohs & Schooler (2008) piece that purported to show a connecting between disbelief and free will. Because the original paper has been cited more than any of the other studies that were part of the recent attempts to replicate, The New York Times just published a new piece on three of the more popular studies that didn't replicate (see here for details). So much for my rival explanation of the original findings!

How might advanced neuroscience—in which perfect neuro-predictions are possible—interact with ordinary judgments of free will? We propose that peoples’ intuitive ideas about indeterminist free will are both imported into and intrude into their representation of neuroscientific scenarios and present six experiments demonstrating intrusion and importing effects in the context of scenarios depicting perfect neuro-prediction. In light of our findings, we suggest that the intuitive commitment to indeterminist free will may be resilient in the face of scientific evidence against such free will.

I read an earlier draft and saw them give a great talk about this work at the recent SPP. It's well worth the read!

Psychologists and psychiatrists tend to be little aware that (a) microbes in our brains and guts are capable of altering our behavior; (b) viral DNA that was incorporated into our DNA millions of years ago is implicated in mental disorders; (c) many of us carry the cells of another human in our brains; and (d) under the regulation of viruslike elements, the paternally inherited and maternally inherited copies of some genes compete for domination in the offspring, on whom they have opposite physical and behavioral effects. This article provides a broad overview, aimed at a wide readership, of the consequences of our coexistence with these selfish entities. The overarching message is that we are not unitary individuals but superorganisms, built out of both human and nonhuman elements; it is their interaction that determines who we are.

Here is a table from the paper (also posted over at DN):

I have a longstanding interest in toxoplasma gondii (here is an old post of mine over at the Experimental Philosophy blog from all the way back in 2005!)--especially the controversial claim that the "manipulation hypothesis" purportedly applies to humans and not just other animals (see here and here). Needless to say, as a skeptic about free will and moral desert, I find the suggestion that we are not unitary agents but rather superorganisms intriguing when it comes to our agency and responsibility. From the manipulation question to the issue of whether we have a unified self, the data summarized by Kramer and Bressen seem relevant to the issues we explore here on this blog.

It's no surprise that this issue has peeked the interest of scientists who are interested in free will. For instance, here is a piece by Cristoff Koch in Scientific American entitled, "Protozoa Could Be Controlling Your Brain"--which begins with the following lead in/hook:

THE ANCIENT DEBATE surrounding the existence of free will appears unresolvable, a metaphysical question that generates much heat yet little light. Common sense and volumes of psychological and neuroscientific research reveal, however, that we are less free than we think we are. Our genes, our upbringing and our environment influence our behaviors in ways that often escape conscious control. Understanding this influence, the advertisement industry spent approximately half a trillion dollars worldwide in 2010 to shape the buying decisions of consumers. And extreme dictatorships, such as that in North Korea, remain in power through the effective use of insidious and all-pervasive forms of propaganda. Yet nothing approaches the perfidy of the one-celled organism Toxoplasma gondii, one of the most widespread of all parasitic protozoa. It takes over the brain of its host and makes it do things, even actions that will cause it to die, in the service of this nasty hitchhiker. It sounds like a cheesy Hollywood horror flick, except that it is for real.

In the endless sort of struggle that neurobiologists have — in terms of free will, determinism — my feeling has always been that there's not a whole lot of free will out there, and if there is, it's in the least interesting places and getting more sparse all the time. But there's a whole new realm of neuroscience which I've been thinking about, which I'm starting to do research on, that throws in another element of things going on below the surface affecting our behavior. And it's got to do with this utterly bizarre world of parasites manipulating our behavior. It turns out that this is not all that surprising. There are all sorts of parasites out there that get into some organism, and what they need to do is parasitize the organism and increase the likelihood that they, the parasite, will be fruitful and multiply, and in some cases they can manipulate the behavior of the host.

As we learn more about "toxo" and other organisms that may influence our macro-behavior without our awareness, it is unsurprising that some might suggest we reevaluate the traditional way of viewing human thought, agency, and behavior. It is surprising, then, that there is no mention of toxoplasma gandii in all of the Philosopher's Index. While the aforementioned manipulation hypothesis was initially met with skepticism when applied to humans, the science has steadily pushed further towards that conclusion. Now this paper by Kramer and Bressen has compiled the findings on various other micro-organisms that (may) influence our behavior in ways that satisfy their interests while running counter to our own.

So, what say you, philosophers of action? What sense are we to make of the gathering data on microorganisms and macrobehavior? Can these findings be summarily dismissed? If so, why? If not, how should it affect what we say about agency and responsibility? If you hate headlines like "My brain made me do it," just think of how you'll respond to "My toxo made me do it"! For skeptics, this is just more grist for the mill. But for the rest of you? You may have some explaining (away) to do...